Recently, Virgin Galactic flew to an altitude of 90 km and is soon(ish) going to allow customers to do the same. This is the first time that the public will have the opportunity to go so high. I understand that it’s crazy expensive ($250,000), but if you were able to make the flight - perhaps Richard Branson let you do it for free - and you saw much more significant curvature than you see from a commercial flight, as they claim you would, what would you make of that observation?

Recently, Virgin Galactic flew to an altitude of 90 km and is soon(ish) going to allow customers to do the same. This is the first time that the public will have the opportunity to go so high. I understand that it’s crazy expensive ($250,000), but if you were able to make the flight - perhaps Richard Branson let you do it for free - and you saw much more significant curvature than you see from a commercial flight, as they claim you would, what would you make of that observation?

Windows cause distortion. An curvature, however consistent with the round earth is caused by the windows. Or a camera. Or some other unexplainable phenomena created by flat earthers.

Recently, Virgin Galactic flew to an altitude of 90 km and is soon(ish) going to allow customers to do the same. This is the first time that the public will have the opportunity to go so high. I understand that it’s crazy expensive ($250,000), but if you were able to make the flight - perhaps Richard Branson let you do it for free - and you saw much more significant curvature than you see from a commercial flight, as they claim you would, what would you make of that observation?

Windows cause distortion. An curvature, however consistent with the round earth is caused by the windows. Or a camera. Or some other unexplainable phenomena created by flat earthers.

Just move your head around and if the earth happens to curve upwards too, then you can blame windows. I don't think it's impossible to tell the difference between looking through distorted glass and looking at a curved earth... That's even assuming the glass on this craft is going to be distorting things all that much.

Being as this 3 year project is now 15 years later, I'm not going to hold my breath.

After Boris's failed vanity Garden Bridge project which has now been scrapped having cost a huge amount of money do you now not believe in bridges? Or gardens?When I were a lad it was all "we'll have flying cars by the year 2000". Some problems are just hard and expensive to solve.Why are we not all zooming across the Atlantic faster than Concorde now? Because propulsion is costly. So aircraft have improved in other ways, notably comfort and entertainment options.This is a hard problem to solve, making space travel accessible to the average Joe. It's disappointing we're not there yet, even Virgin Galactic if it ever gets off the ground won't do it, it will be for the super rich. But projects being delayed and problems being more complicated than anticipated doesn't imply anything "going on", necessarily.

People like Branson are visionaries. Real life does not happen according to people's predictions. Sometimes it serves simply as a catalyst to create something new or something improved. Star Trek predicted cell phones in the 60s - the first brick cell phone for public use was what...late 80s, early 90s? Some things do not always come to fruition either. The genius Tesla was working on wireless energy - that never happened. (Insert the start of government conspiracy theories here, please lol).

After Boris's failed vanity Garden Bridge project which has now been scrapped having cost a huge amount of money do you now not believe in bridges? Or gardens?When I were a lad it was all "we'll have flying cars by the year 2000". Some problems are just hard and expensive to solve.Why are we not all zooming across the Atlantic faster than Concorde now? Because propulsion is costly. So aircraft have improved in other ways, notably comfort and entertainment options.This is a hard problem to solve, making space travel accessible to the average Joe. It's disappointing we're not there yet, even Virgin Galactic if it ever gets off the ground won't do it, it will be for the super rich. But projects being delayed and problems being more complicated than anticipated doesn't imply anything "going on", necessarily.

When they said "flying cars" ... that was 50 years earlier ... not 3 years. When you say you will do something in 3 years that suggests you are using known technologies ... not inventing new ones.

Branson is actually trying to do something relatively simply. Fly to an altitude of 100km. This is a slight of hand suggesting that space starts at 100km because of the Karman Line definition. Which frankly is a very stupid definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line

But you own a spaceship, right? What about your launch pad in the Mojave Desert? The aircraft that drops the spaceship - White Knight? The buildings, the merch store? How can all these things be worth less than £6m?

... unless of course none of these things are actually what you say they are. If in fact they are cheap mock ups and Virgin Galactic is no more than a marketing tool for Virgin Atlantic. But wait, who in their right mind would want to promise people spaceships to boost the brand perception of their airline?

Virgin Galactic is a very old marketing gimmick to give a dull airline a halo effect. Never has Branson had any intention of flying anyone into 'space' ever. It is like pinning your hopes on a company being able to train Meerkats to talk.

Depends upon what you mean by serious and serious about what. Sure it's a brand awareness ploy. So what? He's selling an image. A "You too can fly into 'space', call yourself an astronaut, experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and then tell your foursome on the first tee at the club all about it..."

Whether this all comes to fruition, I guess we'll just wait and see. He's got $175m in ticket sales already. So as long as Galactic doesn't kill a bunch of passengers, there might be money to be made. And I think that's mostly what he is serious about.

That $175m has been a 15 year interest free loan. He'll have to give those inflation ravaged deposits back at some point.

Or not. He could just deliver on the promise.

After the 2014 crash 20 or so ticket holders asked for a refund. From what I read, they got it. I'm sure the T&C's on the tickets are about 4 feet long and probably have a timebound refund window, and a whole slew of stuff. I guess, rather than a purchase, maybe it's more of an investment. Instead of doubling your money after X amount of time your payoff is to be able to call yourself an 'astronaut'. A gamble for sure. But if you have $200-$250k to burn on a 'space' flight maybe you're ok with the risk.